Wild Wild West (1999)

What is the deal with television shows being remade into movies? Is there a logic to this that the people who liked the show on TV for free would pay good money to go to their local theater and see the same thing on the big screen? Is this some kind of a big cosmic joke on humanity just to see how much money can be made from these poor TV-bred schmoes?

I tend to think so, seeing that we've had TV show/movie remakes the likes of The Beverly Hillbillies, The Honeymooners, Bewitched, Leave it to Beaver, Car 54 Where Are You?, Josie and the Pussycats, The Mod Squad, Lost in Space, The Dukes of Hazzard and, yes, a particular movie that featured Agents Steed and Peel.

And before you start in, I understand full well why movie execs turn to TV for inspiration. There have been one or two TV-to-movie remakes that turned out not only entertaining but profitable. Just look at The Addams Family, The Fugitive, Mission: Impossible and the Star Trek movie series (my personal fave is #2 : The Wrath of Khan). The plain fact of the matter, however, is that there are simply some series that don't translate.

I've already named a few, but how about one which is the most glaring example of how NOT to refit a classic series for latter-day consumption? This is something that was just ill-conceived on every level, took great characters and played them for jokes, grossly miscast others and took the entire concept of the show and trashed it, just so they could accommodate the stars and director.

This was a movie so bad, in fact, that they couldn't even get any midgets involved. But I'll get to that in due time. Now, for a little back-story:

In September of 1965 (just three days before I was born, thank you very much), Michael Garrison created a series on CBS that featured two mismatched men - one a rough-and-tumble Army man, the other a gadget-tinkering master of disguise - as early government agents under President Ulysses S. Grant who did battle against a wide array of eccentric and dangerous villains who would dare offend truth, justice and the Western way.

"The Wild Wild West" was a sharp, satirical masterpiece of a TV series that not only lasted four seasons but also had the good fortune of being well-directed and -written and featured two actors who played extremely well off one another. Robert Conrad as James T. West and Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon were both actors of wry wit, good cheer and quick action. The series was a top-notch combination of raucous Western action and science fiction ingenuity, endlessly inventive and always had a clever twist here and there to keep you tuned in till next week.

It even did so well after leaving the air that it had no less than two TV movies featuring Conrad and Martin as their namesakes to again leave audiences amazed and laughing in equal measure.

More proof, as if it were needed, that such a winning combination could not be tampered with lest ye witness a Hindenberg-level disaster.

Well. Here comes the dirigible....

When Barry Sonnenfeld came off his monster hit Men In Black (not to mention TV-to-movie winner The Addams Family), he was soon after tagged to direct the movie version of this classic with a story by Jim and John Thomas (from Predator series fame) and no less than four actual (i.e. - credited) writers. I'm sure there were that many more script doctors on call (at the least).

Already I can sense the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. This is what you feel when you hear about something that is more likely than not about to blow up in someone's face.

Let's get this out of the way first. The story deals with the evil Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh) and his....

What? No, it's not Miguelito Loveless. This time it's Arliss.

Anyway, he has a plan to kidnap several....

Now what.... No, I know Kenneth Branagh isn't a midget. They just cast him as a madman who lost his legs and must now get around in a steam-powered wheelchair. Okay?

Now, he's kidnapping and/or killing many important scientists to help him in his plot to construct a giant....

Wha...No, he doesn't have imaginary conversations with a full-length portrait of himself at any time. Just let me get through this and I'll explain everything. All right?

THANK you.

Where was...okay; Loveless plots to kidnap President Grant so that he can force the government to give back huge parcels of land to their original title-holders (American Indians, the Spanish, etc.) along with a more-huge tract for himself. The scientists will aid him in his efforts through construction of a few giant robotic constructs. Certainly the only ones who can help the cause for American democracy are Civil War hero James West (Will Smith) and eccentric U.S. Marshal Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline), of course.

Sonnenfeld does a funny thing here with the direction: he more or less approaches Wild Wild West as if it were a legitimate Western actioner. Not a glimmer of the irony or snark of Men In Black is here and neither is the lightness of tone. It's understood that Sonnenfeld and company had to go back and blow up the budget even more in order to film more comedic scenes to keep people in mind that this was actually supposed to be a comedy. Whenever you're a director and you have to film MORE scenes to prove what kind of a product your movie is, maybe going back to Square One is a viable option.

Okay, now to address your obvious and more immediate concerns, I will concede that the casting stinks. Branagh is way too British to play a good-ol'-boy and his accent is even worse than Michael Caine's in Hurry Sundown. And what's with the beard that curves around his face at odd degrees? And why, exactly couldn't they have just cast a small person to play Loveless? Certainly Hollywood has enough of a talent pool to be able to find one who could act as well as Michael Dunn. But no; Branagh was available and, in spite of him being a famous Shakespearean actor/director and handy with an American accent in the movie Dead Again, Branagh is about as Southern and down-home as Rudy Giuliani. And while I understand the idea that Branagh at least be missing his legs so he can at least be the butt of some painfully unfunny short/not-able-to-stand jokes, why make him lose his wonderful British tone? If you're even changing his name from Miguelito to Arliss for no discernible reason and taking away the man's legs, at least let him keep his own voice, I say.

As far as Will Smith goes, do we agree the only reason he was finally cast as James West was twofold: he's a hot star who never had a bad movie deal AND Sonnenberg worked with him before in Men In Black, a movie in which he was effortlessly charming, funny and charismatic? I'm glad we agree on that. The problem in West is that Smith is just so incredibly wrong as James West. Not only can he not invest a single line with any level of immediacy, he just seems SO disinterested and SO uninvolved that he phones in every line he says and spends most every scene looking off-camera - maybe looking for an escape route.

What about Kevin Kline? A natural resource of talent and timing? He certainly comes closest to essaying a character - really, who couldn't in the part of a disguise-happy creative genius? The problem is that Kline's "eccentricity" isn't a modicum of what he had in A Fish Called Wanda. It's like he had to write his own part on the fly and then was told to cut out every other line of dialogue. And he just doesn't disappear into the costumes he wears the way Ross Martin did. What I mean is that you KNOW it's Kevin Kline dressed like a saloon girl or a French trapper, but he doesn't BECOME a saloon girl or French trapper, like he should. It's just...Kevin Kline wearing a costume.

All that is bad enough; miscasting both of your actors is one thing. But there's a bigger gripe still to be had: Smith and Kline have absolutely no chemistry together onscreen whatsoever. This is James West and Artemus Gordon we're talking about. This doesn't need to be one of those working relationships where they hate working with each other then, through their adventures, grow to respect one another and their abilities. I've seen 86,223 movies and TV shows with that as their groundwork and I hated all of them. If this wasn't a writing conceit, did Smith and Kline really hate working together so much that they couldn't even hide their mutual disdain through acting? Were they filmed separately then their scenes spliced together? Did they have a bet going on how little they could interact?

Oh yes, and Salma Hayek plays a female who happens to be part of the proceedings because she has a personal stake in the safety of one of the scientists. Why did I not mention her in Wild Wild West until just now? Because to be perfectly honest, I didn't even remember she was in this movie until just now. Salma is one of the absolute most beautiful women Hollywood has ever been graced with in this day and age. A voluminous beauty who has proved her acting chops time and again. But here, she is absolutely and completely wasted. She doesn't even ignite passion or fire between her leading men. Like everything else in this movie, Salma Hayek serves as just another plot contrivance in a movie filled with them.

I have endless respect for M. Emmett Walsh and Ted Levine as actors and have enjoyed them in many projects before and since. To say that their respective characters of a train conductor and a battle-scarred Confederate General with a hearing aid horn implanted into his left ear are incomplete characters isn't so much a complaint as it is a description of how they come across in the finished product. That stinks, because these are good actors we're talking about.

A lot has been made about the end boss here, and I don't mean Loveless. A gigantic steam-powered spider contraption comes into play to kidnap President Grant and blow up many buildings, desert scenery and plateaus. It may look impressive, but it is indicative as to the problems with Wild Wild West. This is a movie that simply had way too many ideas and set pieces to be able to keep its eye on the prize. No time for characterization if there's going to be a gigantic mechanical spider to deal with. No need to make the female characters anything more than props to move around or push out of the way when we have cumbersome metal collars to hook onto our heroes and watch them run away from spinning saw blades aiming to decapitate them. No need to wrap up every story thread evenly when we can just have West and Gordon ride a giant mechanical spider off into the sunset.

So much stuff going on, so many ideas that go nowhere, so many fights and confrontations that go absolutely nowhere and so much of a story that really makes no difference whether you pay attention to it or not. As they say, a horse designed by committee often ends up as a camel. What we have here is a two-hump dromedary of a disaster.

In the end, and this really and honestly surprised me, Wild Wild West ended up earning back its $170 million budget once all the world take was calculated. Why? Simple: if a movie promotes itself as a "reinvention" of a classic TV show, has enough loud effects, big-name stars, flashy direction and snappy soundtrack songs (by Smith, Enrique Iglesias and others), then it's going to have covered its keister enough to guarantee that, no matter how bad things turn out in the finished product, the flick will still prove a money-maker if it has everything Jack and Jill Trailer Park go to movies for.

For the rest of us who demand to have some actual, honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned entertainment in their movie.... Well, let me put it this way: when they can't even recycle a good TV show into a halfway decent movie, maybe it's time to look elsewhere for inspiration.

I also understand that now, long after the fact, Will Smith has publicly apologized to Robert Conrad for insulting Conrad's sensibilities and for sullying the name of "The Wild Wild West" with such an inferior product as Wild Wild West.

Now where's MY apology, Will?